


A Midwinter's Morning

by coffee_with_the_sunset



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Fiances - Fandom, Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Fluff, Happy Ending, I wrote 1700 words of self indulgent fluff, Just wholesome neighbor content, Oneshot, Romance is kinda Freeform, Suburbia, We aren't toxic and I don't like writing ships in detail, Wholesome, fiances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:41:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29767404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_with_the_sunset/pseuds/coffee_with_the_sunset
Summary: Ranboo the latchkey kid meets disaster polyamorus fiancés and they become friends. Will Quackity beat the shit out of Ranboo's dubious parents? Will Karl bake a cake? Will Sapnap ever finish the line about dildos?I wrote self indulgent wholesome neighbor content
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 4
Kudos: 230





	A Midwinter's Morning

Karl longingly gazed at the shoveled driveway across the street. Then he groaned and put on his snow boots. The light bounced painfully bright off of snow that had dumped down that morning, and Karl wasn’t stupid; he had mentally prepared himself for this when the newsman last night had threatened a winterstorm warning. Still, having to face the mass of white hit a little different in full daylight than in the norming when Quackity had given Karl a mock salute before heading off to work. Shovel in hand, he began the dreaded task of shoveling the driveway. The cold seeped through his gloves and the snow was wet, heavy. Already Karl was starting to get frustrated with the boringness of manual labor. His eyes hurt from squinting, his left arm was definitely going to be sore tomorrow, and he had barely finished a quarter of the long driveway. 

Karl regretted buying such a big house for him and his fiances. He looked again at the house belonging to the clear driveway across the street. The lights were on in the living room, the mailbox was dug out, and even the icicles had been knocked off the eaves. Karl threw down his shovel and walked over to the Marcus house. 

He knocked and waited at the obnoxiously large wooden door until a familiar face opened the door. 

“Goodmorning!” Ranboo greeted him cheerily. 

“Do you have a snowblower?” Karl looked up at the 6’6 teenager feeling ridiculous.

Ranboo hummed as if seriously considering the offer, “How will I be paid?”

Karl smiled and tried not to laugh, “Free hot cocoa and friendship?”

This wasn’t the first time Karl had asked Ranboo for a favor. Honestly, one of the benefits of living in the suburbs was the ample amount of teenage labor available for a few dollars. It had started as a strictly business relationship, albeit a friendly one. Ranboo was always polite and his family was some of the first people Karl had met when they first moved. It wasn’t until Karl had realized Ranboo was only 3 years younger than Sapnap that he decided maybe he could be more casual with the teenager. Ranboo had almost died of shock the first time Karl made a john mulaney reference, and though it had taken a month for Ranboo to stop acting excessively formal out of habit, eventually Ranboo stopped treating Karl like a friend of his parents. Both were grateful they had moved past that stage in their friendship, as Karl absolutely hated the obnoxious couple a few houses down that acted like a 60 year old couple cooing at a baby when they saw Ranboo walking his dog. Quackity still jokes about the time Ranboo had accidentally called Sapnap ‘Mr. Jacobs’ at dinner. Sapnap had turned dark red, and Quackity could not stop cackling while Karl struggled to explain that they weren’t properly married yet. 

Even though it was unorthodox for Karl to be friends with a highschooler, it wasn’t awkward at all. One of the first times Ranboo had rang their doorbell, he asked for a ride to school to avoid the suburban equivalent of a tsunami happening outside, and Sapnap agreed right away. It was on his way to campus anyways, and he hadn’t properly met Ranboo, only hearing stories about the famed 6’6 borderline-cynical child that lived across the street. At dinner that night, Sapnap kept mentioning that Ranboo was a good kid, and Karl knew they had definitely discussed a mutual interest in minecraft at some point on the car ride.

Karl always wondered why Ranboo’s parents were barely around. A small part of him wanted to ask, but the larger and more polite majority of his brain screamed to not bring it up. On a particularly interesting grocery store trip, Quackity had run into Ranboo. Karl never asked what happened or what they talked about only knowing that the curt comment of “Ranboo’s coming over for dinner tonight” meant Ranboo was coming to dinner and that was that. 

Karl made pasta while Sapnap talked about his week seated at the counter. The house smelled like tomatoes and basil, and Karl laughed whenever Sapnap threw another crude insult at his teachers. Quackity answered the door, and the other two welcomed an unsure Ranboo into the house. Sapnap waved off the timid thank yous and handed him a bowl of spaghetti. The odd group of four sat down at the dinner table from Karl’s old apartment. They ate in silence. Ranboo avoided eye contact. Forks clinked. Sapnap coughed. Karl glanced at Quackity who was staring hard at the pepper grinder. He looked up to see Karl raising his eyebrow and let loose a joke about how the pepper grinder Karl had bought looked like a dildo. 

“He isn’t wrong,” Ranboo mumbled. Sapnap giggled into his glass of water. 

Karl scoffed, “I don’t see you doing any decorating.”

“Sure I’ll just bring out my extensive collection of-”

“SAPNAP!”

The blanket of silence lifted. Quackity and Sapnap attempting to top each other's sexual analogies for the house decorations they saw a Hobby Lobby the first time they went furniture shopping together. Karl tried to cut them off every time and turn the conversation away but failed consistently. After a while Ranboo mentioned that the mermaid wine bottle holders always looked suspicious to him, and Karl nearly choked on his noodles.

“You two are such a bad influence.”

“I think this is the start of a beautiful mentorship,” Quackity kissed Karl’s cheek and they moved on to discuss the mystery bush in their backyard now starting to grow some kind of berry, Ranboo talked about how the city was redoing some of the roads and how he had to walk past a construction zone on his way to school now, even the new Minecraft update set to come out next year. Long after their plates had been empty Sapnap offered to wash the dishes. Ranboo suggested that he head home for the night and Quackity stood to follow him out. Karl pretended not to notice the serious hushed conversation or how Ranboo hugged Quackity before leaving. 

Ranboo coming over to their house became somewhat frequent, at least twice or three times a month. He comes over with a stuffed backpack and writes three consecutive essays while Karl watches in awe. He begs for help on his college forms and Sapnap abandons his web design homework. He knocks on their door in the middle of an intense mario kart battle and watches as Quackity wins every race except one because he was too busy spouting nonsense insults at his fiances to notice Ranboo passing him at the finish line. He comes over on a weekend to find a panicked Karl in the middle of baking a cake for Quackity’s birthday and is conscripted into making buttercream frosting. When Sapnap gets home three minutes later with a dozen cupcakes, they laugh while lighting an irrational amount of birthday candles. 

__

That specific midwinter’s morning Karl had knocked asking for help shoveling the driveway. 

“How will I be paid?”

Karl smiled and tried not to laugh, “Free hot cocoa and friendship?”

Ranboo rolled his eyes and they finished clearing the fiance's driveway of snow in a few minutes with the help of a no doubt expensive snow blower. Karl helps put the snow blower away and they head inside Ranboo’s house for the first time to make the hot cocoa. It was big. You could tell it was big from the outside alone, but the vaulting ceilings and massive couch seemed so grand for the lanky teenager that had played through Portal too many times to count. 

Karl hung up his jacket on a shiny coat hanger and followed Ranboo to the kitchen where the stainless steel counter sparkled and… was that a samsung smart fridge? Karl stared around the spacious room full of smooth and shiny surfaces. The color palette was a bit bland for Karl though. He preferred bright colors and warm browns to the grays and whites of Ranboo’s house. 

Ranboo set the kettle on the stove to heat the water. 

“Even your teapot looks expensive,” Karl gaped.

“A lot of things in this house are expensive,” Ranboo laughed. “I don’t even sit on the couch. I'm scared of ruining it.”

The hanging lights at the peak of the ceiling lit up the entire kitchen that seemed to be in black and white filter. “How do you even clean the lights?”

Ranboo shrugged, “A cleaning person comes in once a week to do the entire place. I don’t think he likes me though.”

Karl turned his attention back to the boy mindlessly tapping his fingers on the counter.

He mumbled, “I like your house better.”

“Is it my charming decorations?”

Ranboo smiled and went back to fiddling with the heat knob on the electric stove. They sat in silence for a few minutes as Karl still looked around the huge kitchen with two ovens. Karl thought that having two ovens would be nice, but he didn’t really bake enough to consider buying them. The kettle whistled and Ranboo brought out the mugs. They stirred in cheap hot cocoa powder and started talking again. 

“So when are you three getting properly married?”

Karl sipped his cocoa, “We’re gonna wait until Sapnap finishes college and gets set up at a job he has lined up. It’s not a huge thing but we want it to be nice, you know?”

Ranboo nodded and stood swirling the mug around in his hands. “Sometimes I see photos of my parents’ wedding.”

“Was it pretty? They clearly have the whole black and white color scheme down,” Karl gestured to the room around them with gray walls, white ceilings, black cabinets, and steel counters. 

“It looked big, but no one in the photos are smiling.” Ranboo continued to stare at the liquid in his mug. Karl frowned.

“How are your parents?”

Ranboo set down his mug, “I don’t know really. I talk to them, but they avoid coming home a lot. They’re still here and taking care of me and buying groceries and paying bills and all that stuff. It’s just,” Ranboo sighed and looked down at Karl. “they’re not around.”

“Well,” Karl started. “Our door is always open, and if you need anything, you have me and Sapnap and Quackity to be there for you.”

Ranboo nodded and finally took a long drink from his hot cocoa. 

4 inches of snow,

free hot cocoa, 

and an unlikely pair of friends:

A midwinter’s morning in suburbia

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this inspired by this https://emryeezys.tumblr.com/post/641708655780184064/rnaboo-the-fianc%C3%A9s tumblr post 
> 
> Glad you made it to the end! Any feed back you give would be greatly appreciated!


End file.
